


The curse of oxytocin

by KendraPendragon



Series: My tumblr writing [24]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-01
Updated: 2018-10-01
Packaged: 2019-07-23 10:28:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16157180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KendraPendragon/pseuds/KendraPendragon
Summary: Sherlock avoids Molly. She won't have it. When she finds out why, everything is forgiven.





	The curse of oxytocin

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Sherlock hisses angrily and tosses the seventh blood sample into the bin.   
All seven tests have come out positive. How annoying. How very, very annoying.   
But no more!  
From now on, he would work against it. This bloody hormone wouldn’t alter his beliefs.  
Mind over matter!  
  


~oOo~  
  


“Oh, hello Molly. What a lovely surprise. Come in!”  
Sherlock freezes, little Jamie lying over his shoulder sucking at the little white towel separating her curious mouth from his expensive burgundy shirt.   
“Thank you.”  
His ears are listening to banter at the door and to the sounds of a jacket being unzipped. His brain is working at light speed, trying to come up with a plausible flight plan. But all are thrown over board due to the cuddly little bundle of Watson in his arms. He can’t abandon the child. She needs him.   
“Is Sherlock here?”  
John Watson, if you’ve ever been my friend, you say ‘no’!  
“Yes, he’s in Jamie’s room. Just go through.”  
Thanks, John.  
Footsteps coming closer.  
How are the odds that Mary would rip his head of if he jumped out the window with Jamie on his arm? A quick calculation gives back results of 99,95%.  
Rats.  
“Sherlock.”  
Deep breath. Calm down. Mask on.   
“Hello, Molly.”  
He is refusing to turn around, walking up and down with the child in his arms, patting her back, trying to get her to burp like he had been doing before Molly had distracted him.  
“So, you’re alive then.”

“Obviously.”  
His eyes want to glance but he forbids them.   
“Is that it?”  
Her tone is spiced with boiling anger.   
Don’t look. Don’t you dare.  
Sherlock remains silent, focussing on Jamie, pulling the towel out of her little mouth once again.  
“Four months, Sherlock. Not a word. And now you just…”  
She takes a deep breath.  
“Why? Just tell me why and I’m out of here. What? What is the problem? Did I upset you some-?”  
The most adorable burp interrupts Molly and Sherlock loves this little girl even more for it. He smiles at her and she looks at him with her big blue eyes and her wobbling head before her eyes focus on something behind his shoulder. Someone.   
Just when I thought we were friends. You’re just like your father.   
Her chubby little hands reach and coos a demand.  
Molly takes a deep breath.  
“Hey, baby,” she whispers, her voice soft and warm now, and a second later he can feel her warmth on his back. Then her small hand take Jamie’s and Sherlock can’t help but watch them shaking hands.   
“Every time we meet you’re a bit more beautiful,” Molly says and the sentence echoes within his head, only with his voice and her picture.   
When he feels Molly’s free hand on his shoulder blade he can literally feel his brain betraying him.   
For a moment, it’s just the three of them. Him holding his god-daughter, Molly standing right behind him, caressing the child with her hand.   
The warm feeling spreading in his chest is detestable.   
A clearing of his throat breaks this wicked spell and he is able to step away from her. He starts pacing the room once more, cradling Jamie and humming her to sleep.   
A minute passes. She’s still there.   
“Sherlock, I swear to God, if you don’t start talking now, I’ll clip you ‘round the ear.”  
“I’m carrying your god-daughter.”  
“I bet she’ll love it.”  
His eyes dart to her, glaring.  
Big mistake.   
His brain is working against him again. Damn this woman.  
He refuses to talk until she takes a threatening step forward.  
“I’ve been busy, Molly. As you can see, I’m helping the Watsons.”  
“You didn’t even reply to my texts.”  
“I got my hands full with this child.”  
“So? You’ve texted me sitting on the toilet once. Just tell me what’s wrong. No, in fact, you better start with an apology.”  
“Apology?”  
Detestable word. It makes him look at her. For a second, he’s surprised. Then he remembers that she has cut and dyed her hair, the straight, long mousy brown replaced with a light auburn mop of soft curls that frame her face, bringing out her pixie nose and the doe eyes.   
He gulps and the crook of his arms itches.   
Test. Another test. But he can’t. No equipment. No escape.  
“Apology what for?” he tries to stay in control.   
She looks like she is short from slapping him again. After eight years he knows that look.  
“For having me worry about you, you clod!”  
“Shhh!”  
But too late. Her loud voice has startled Jamie and she is squirming. Sherlock coos at her and continues his way around the room.   
“Well done, Molly.”  
“Oh, shut up.”  
His eyebrows disappear in his hair.   
She’s slapped him before, but she’s never actually told him to shut up. That’s new.   
“You know, Sherlock, I’m really tired of being treated like crap. I’m a good person. I saved your life. I’m always there for you. For eight years I’ve been an open ear, a consultant and a friend, but most of all I’ve been a bin for your foul moods. I’m so tired of thinking and worrying about you while you don’t give a damn whether I’m dead or alive.”  
Sherlock’s heart clenches.   
“If you don’t want to be my friend, just be a man and say it.”  
He stands on the other side of the room and looks at her. Jamie’s hand is fisted in his collar and her regular breathing hits his throat.   
This is it. The opportunity he had waited for. Just one sentence and he would be free.   
…  
He tries to open his mouth. His lips are twitching, but they won’t open. To hell with them. And to hell with the standing hair in his neck and the hammering heart in his chest.   
…  
He can’t. He can’t say it.   
Apparently, he’s not man enough.  
His brother would have a good laugh at this.

Molly lifts her arms in a challenging gesture and for one split second he sees a life in front of his eyes; a life without her in it.  
“Fine, have it your way, then,” Molly says sternly and turns around.   
He can see her leave and never come back, never understanding…  
“Oxytocin!”  
Jamie starts crying. Her shouting god-father has scared her.   
“What?”   
As good as he can Sherlock tries to calm down the baby while he is also trying to get his own shock under control.   
Why on earth did he say that, of all things his mind could have made up?  
“Oxytocin? Sherlock?”  
Great. No way back now.  
“Oxyctocin. Whenever I’m with you, my brain releases oxytocin.”  
“How on earth could you possibly know that?”  
“Tests.”  
“Tests?”  
“Several tests. Over the course of a month.”  
Putting Jamie into her bed gives Sherlock another few seconds of not facing Molly.  
“Are you serious?”  
“Yes. I’m a scientist, Molly.”  
“Give me a second to understand this…oh my goodness, now it all makes sense. You at my place all the time, then suddenly excusing yourself and disappearing in the loo. You drew your blood, didn’t you?”  
“Obviously.”  
She giggles.  
“I thought you had some digestive disorder or something.”  
“Excuse me?!”  
“What was I supposed to think?”  
They look at each other. A too crooked, way too adorable smile is on her lips. He takes a deep breath and averts his eyes.   
“So,” Molly finally speaks into the silence, “you want to cuddle me.”  
Sherlock makes a face that has Molly laugh.   
“I do not!”  
“You just admitted it! You said your brain releases the cuddle-hormone whenever you see me.”  
“Not 'whenever I see you’! And don’t call it that,” he protests, his disgust showing.   
Molly finds this more than amusing. The consulting detective is confused. A second ago she wanted to end their friendship and now she was smiling; or to be more precise: laughing at him.  
Now she crosses the arms in front of her chest and tilts her head to the side.   
His jaw clenches. He can feel the shift in their dynamic. And he doesn’t like it one bit.   
“Tell me about your experiments.”  
“Experiments?”  
“Oh, don’t even try. There were loads of them. For example the night we cooked together. All these times you accidentally touched me.”  
She puts the 'accidentally’ in air quotes.   
“Or the time when you stared at me for almost five minutes, which was super creepy, by the way. Or when you walked in on me in the shower. Also an 'accident’.”  
“Fine, yes, I experimented. I had to test what exactly caused the hormone release.”  
“Of course. Sensible procedure. So, you tested visual contact first. What results did you get?”  
Molly is a scientist and she is intrigued. He likes that. It helps to detach himself from the data.   
“Visual contact held for too long did initiate release, but the dose was low and manageable…at first. As the study intensified, the dosage of released hormones increased. The last increase was when you cut your hair.”  
“Oh? Thank you.”  
She smiles and runs her fingers through her hair, causing a tingling sensation in his hands.   
Impatiently, he clears his throat.   
“It was obvious the results were not varying, so I moved on to the physical studies.”  
“I can’t wait to hear these results.”  
Molly slowly walks closer. The hair on his arms stand and heat creeps up his cheeks.  
“Close physical proximity leading to inappropriate thoughts leading to distraction leading to lack in focus…”  
“Ah. I see.”  
She stops and looks at him.  
“So the only logical solution to that was…”  
“…instant termination of acquaintance, yes.”  
A few seconds of silence in which she processes the information.   
“What kind of inappropriate thoughts?”   
Suddenly, she is right in front of him, the space between them has the size of a hand. Sherlock gulps and his eyes dart to her mouth.   
“Kiss…Kissing. Many thoughts about kissing.”  
Only four fingers of space left between them.   
“Just kissing?”  
“No.”  
“What else?”  
Three fingers. The temperature of the room is increasing unnaturally fast.   
“You know what else.”   
Why is she torturing him?   
“How would I know what goes on inside this beautiful brain?”  
His lips twitch into a smile. To her, his brain is beautiful. He is beautiful. Not the wreck he sees in himself.   
“You…and me. Naked. Having sex. Various positions, various places. The chair and your desk the most popular choices.”  
Of course he doesn’t need to specify. She knows which chair he is talking about.   
“I must say, Mr. Holmes…”  
There goes another finger. They’re down to two fingers!  
“…I like the way your brain is thinking.”  
“Yeah, well,” he says, escapes with a side steps and hurries to the other side of the room, “I don’t. That’s why I terminated the contact.”  
While he is arranging the books in the shelf in an alphabetical order her stare is burning two holes into his shirt.   
“I must say, I am a bit disappointed in you,” Molly disrupts the silence once again, “a good scientist isn’t satisfied until he has tested every alternative.”  
Oh, that woman. She could make his blood boil in not only one way.   
“I did test the other option,” he presses through gritted teeth.  
“No, you didn’t.”  
“Yes, I did.”  
He turns around again.  
“How?”  
He opens his mouth, then realizes what he is about to say, better said confess, and can’t close it fast enough. Molly instantly picks up on his hesitance.   
“What have you done to me? Sherlock, if you have drugged me I swear I’m going to-”  
“No, of course I haven’t drugged you!” he snaps.   
“Then what did you do?”  
Now he is blushing, he can feel it. He swivels on his heel and continues to arrange the books.   
“You were sleeping and I…touched your hair.”  
“Oh. And?”  
“It didn’t help.”  
“Did you like it?”  
“What?”  
“Touching my hair.”  
His fingers tingle as he clearly remembers how silken her hair feels.   
“It doesn’t matter. The main thing is it didn’t help.”  
“Yes, well, it was just touching my hair. I think if you’d intensified your studies a bit more in this direction you would have learned that oxytocin is not as scary as you think.”  
“I’m not scared.”  
He whirls around, upset by such an accusation, and stares into those big brown eyes that haunt him in his dreams, which are directly in front of him. His back bumps into the bookshelf.   
“What about kissing?”  
Sherlock blinks, counting down the fingers of space again until there is only one left and he smells her honey scented body butter and feels her warmth coming at him in waves and his system gets swamped with the abhorred hormone. Searching for support he grabs the wood of the shelf. His eyes are glued to her smiling mouth.  
“K-Kissing?”  
She nods.   
“I think we would get a good amount of data from a kiss.”  
The oxytocin is being pumped through his system and he wants nothing more than to take her into his arms and snog her. But hell no! He is a man of logic! He is above these silly things!  
“No, we wouldn’t.”  
He tries to escape again, but Molly steps in his way.  Sherlock is trapped and at the verge of panic. With each passing second it gets harder to form a logical thought and so he slips once again:  
“I’ve already tried that.”  
Now Molly frowns.  
“While you were sleeping.”  
Sherlock has no idea why he explains.   
“You kissed me while I was sleeping?”  
“Yes. Multiple times. No satisfying results. This oxytocin is still bothersome and I don’t want it in my body, so you have to go.”  
Placing both hands on her shoulders – and fighting the urge to pull her against him – he pushes her away and crosses the room once again. He’s back at Jamie’s bed and watches the baby girl sleep.   
“Fine, I’ll cut you a deal,” Molly finally says after a moment.   
Sherlock looks at her doubtfully.  
“One kiss. If you don’t like it, I’m gone.”  
“I already kissed you, Molly.”  
“Yes, but I didn’t kiss you.”  
“What difference does it make?” he asks impatiently.  
“If you don’t know that you haven’t been kissed properly.”  
His eyes narrow. She’s challenging him again.  
“If I don’t like it, will you leave without tears?”  
Now Molly glares.   
“I’ll try my best,” she says sarcastically.   
“Fine.”  
“Sometimes I don’t know why I even bother,” Molly mumbles loud enough for him to hear.   
They meet in the middle of the room.   
“So, how do you want to-”  
Molly isn’t in the mood for discussions any more. She just grabs his face and pulls it down and shuts him up with her mouth.

Something sparks inside his head and his eyes fly shut. Oxytocin is released, so bloody much that his knees weaken and his head is spinning. He tells himself that he wraps his arms around her for support and nothing else. Her body pressed against his is nothing but something to cling to while his body is in shock. And his tongue pushing against her lips and then entering her mouth is only there for…for…balance?   
Yes, balance. Balance works.   
The little sigh Molly makes clears his head for good and all focus lies on that admittedly heavenly kiss.   
Molly Hooper is excellent at kissing. And she’s even better at snogging, as it turns out.  
Sherlock doesn’t mind.  
Suddenly he doesn’t mind the effects of oxytocin. Kissing Molly is worth it. And holding her, absorbing her warmth like a heat-sponge.  
Heat-sponge?   
Well, thinking is difficult right now. Kissing on the other hand is easy. So easy.   
And sooo so good…

When Molly breaks the kiss, they are both panting. Sherlock feels warm and happy and thrilled like he only does when he’s working on a nine.  
“Well?” Molly asks after she clears her throat. “How do you feel?”  
She snuggles close to him, her arms around his hips.   
“Good. I feel good.”  
“Told you so.”  
“Yes, you did.”  
They look into each other’s eyes and smile.   
“Will you say sorry now?”  
“Sorry.”  
She lifts her eyebrow.   
“Do you know what you’re saying sorry for?”  
“For being an idiot who pushed you away when clearly you are the solution to all my problems?”  
From the way she grins and bites her lip he knows she is pleased with his answer for once.   
“Well, not all problems. But this one, yes, definitely.”  
He nods in agreement and with a giggle she buries her head in his shirt. Automatically his hand wanders into her hair and he kisses the top of her head; the tenderest gesture he’s ever made. But it feels bloody right. She wakes all these sentimental feelings in him. They scare him a lot less after learning how satisfying it is to give into them.   
For a while, he allows himself to just enjoy her closeness.

“Molly.”  
“Hm?”  
“I need more data. I think it’s best if we continue our study.”  
She giggles and untangles herself from him. He doesn’t like that at all.   
“I have to take care of some things first. Meet you at Baker Street tonight, around 9?”  
He only nods. Now that they’re at a proper distance, he can see her flushed face and her swollen lips; he cannot help but feel proud. He grins.   
Instantly, she narrows her eyes.   
“You’re not looking any better, Mister Holmes, so don’t make fun of my flustered state.”  
“You’re aroused, not flustered. Your flat breathing and your dilated pupils give it away.”  
Her mouth drops open, then she grins.   
“At least I didn’t build a tent in my trousers.”  
He needs a seconds, then he understands.   
His eyes dart down.   
Damn.   
“See you tonight,” she laughs and leaves the room.   
He hears the front door a moment later. When he hears footsteps approaching, he flees into the bathroom. Before he can listen to Mary’s little speech, which will doubtlessly happen, he must calm down. In every sense.  
He clears his head, takes a deep breath, imagines the smell of John’s dirty socks and washes his face. The tent vanishes.   
The big fat grin on his face, however, is staying for the rest of the day and gets even bigger the next morning after a night of cuddle-hormone driven sex.   
Of course he takes mental notes during the act.   
Sherlock Holmes is a scientist, after all.


End file.
